


Stick Season

by mombasas



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, Marauders' Era, Smoking, Underage Drinking, Werewolf Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 09:07:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4473470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mombasas/pseuds/mombasas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Moony,” James said after a moment, equally quiet. “There’s a difference between – what happens to you – and, y’know, crying a lot and shouting and eating weird food and everything.”</p><p>“I know,” Remus said, forcing lightness into his tone. He looked up. Peter was staring at him, James looking on with concern, but Sirius’ grey eyes were fixed firmly on the ground. He straightened up, suddenly regretting saying anything at all. “Anyway,” he said firmly, eager to move on. “The question is what to do about the <i>girls</i>.” </p><p>(In which James isn't Florence Nightingale, Sirius isn't avoiding Remus, and Remus is absolutely not Having Feelings about his best friend. He might, however, have accidentally become the de facto advisor for all things monthly in the castle.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stick Season

**Author's Note:**

> for L and G and M, all of whom had to listen to me yelling insensibly about Sirius Black: Nice Drunk Girl in the Club Bathroom.

_"She calls it 'stick season,' this slow disrobing of summer,_  
_leaf by leaf, till the bores of tall trees rattle and scrape in the wind."_  
-   Eric Pinder

 

It all started because of Peter. More specifically, it started because Peter forgot his divination textbook in the courtyard. They were in the dormitory when he realized; James was cross-legged in bed, peering down at a letter to his mum, and Remus and Sirius were both atop Remus’s own bed, Remus absently nibbling on a chocolate frog while Sirius sprawled lengthwise across the bedcovers, looking at James upside down and attempting to convince the other to include a love-note from Sirius at the close of the letter.

“If you don’t, I’ll have to send her one separately,” Sirius mused. It sounded like a threat. “A poem, maybe. Moony, what rhymes with _Mrs. Potter_?”

“ _Rotter_ ,” James said darkly.

“Also _hotter_.” Sirius paused. “ _Besotter_.”

“That’s not a word,” Remus pointed out.

Sirius waved his hand, dismissive. “Our love defies definition.”

“So does your death-wish, apparently,” said Remus, eyeing James’s reddening face.

“It’s not here,” Peter broke in, and Remus felt a surge of gratefulness for the interruption. He was exhausted and didn’t feel up to the task of mediating even a halfhearted row between James and Sirius. The blonde boy sat, desolate, on the floor beside his trunk, the epicenter of a small disaster area of scattered books, bits of parchment, and unpaired socks.

“What’s not, Pete?” James asked, clearly equally eager for anything that might distract Sirius from his relentless pursuit of other people’s mothers.

“ _Seeing Beyond the Veil_.” Peter’s voice bore a slightly panicked quality. “The essay’s due tomorrow and I haven’t even _started_ – ”

“All right, don’t get your tail in a knot,” said Sirius, rolling his head towards Peter. “ _Seeing Beyond the Veil_ , Merlin. Where’d you see it last?” Peter’s face screwed up in concentration before clearing.

“The courtyard,” he said, with relief. “I’m certain, I had it out because Dana Shaffer wanted to look up agate crystals.” The other three exchanged glances. It went without saying that there was no spare copy to be lent; James and Remus had wisely never elected to take Divination, and Sirius had dropped it as soon as he’d realized the enormity of his mistake. Someone would have to fetch Peter’s copy, clearly, and it was equally clear that that someone would not be Peter. The youngest boy was an excellent mate and solid back-up in most situations, but, perhaps owing to the personality traits that determined his Animagus form, he also tended to be skittish and easily-spooked when alone. It was late in the evening; the sun had set some time ago and curfew was solidly in effect throughout the castle.

Remus looked at James. James looked at Sirius. Sirius avoided eye contact with everyone, but Remus realized with a sinking feeling that he knew what was about to happen, even before Sirius’s hand began moving. “Nose goes.”

“Nose.”

Remus’s hand was the slowest of the three, probably, he reflected bitterly, because he still retained some futile hope in the decency of the human race. It dropped back down to the bed from its useless flight to his own face. The nose-goes rule was unbreakable. He leveled what he hoped was a severely displeased look at Sirius, then at James.

“Unbelievable,” he said. He was lying. This kind of betrayal was, unfortunately, only too common. James gestured, splattering ink from the quill he still held over the scarlet bedspread.

“Take the cloak, Moony.”

“You’re a prefect, anyway,” Sirius said. The novelty of one of his best friends holding the office of Prefect had, apparently, not worn off in the three months since Remus received his letter. “If anyone has a chance out in those wild, eldritch corridors, it’s you.”

Remus hauled himself out of bed, rolling his eyes and grabbing the first warm jumper he saw, which happened to belong to Sirius. The full moon was a long way off yet, but his nose was still sensitive; the sweater smelled like the outdoors, the atrocious cigarette habit Sirius had picked up the previous summer, and the light sandalwood fragrance of his soap. Remus shook his head slightly and tugged the soft garment over his head, hoping no one had seen him inhaling his best mate’s jumper like some kind of weirdo, but his hopes were dashed when the material passed over his eyes and he found that Sirius’ gaze was fixed on him. The other boy looked away quickly, and Remus flushed.

“Prongs, tell her I think her eyes are beautiful, at _least,_ ” Sirius said. Remus grabbed his wand and the remnants of the chocolate frog before digging the cloak out of James’s open trunk. He shot Peter a reassuring smile when the boy thanked him as he passed, closing the heavy wooden door on the sound of James’s outraged shouting.

 *

Truthfully, Remus wasn’t entirely displeased to be out wandering the castle that night. The corridors were dark, but some light from the waxing moon slanted in through the narrow windows, and there was something dreamlike about seeing Hogwarts so empty and quiet and still. Filch and Mrs. Norris were lurking somewhere, he was sure, but it was easy to imagine that he was the only one awake in the entire building, in all of Scotland, perhaps; the only one there to see the silvery light on the stone walls, to hear the low grinding of a staircase moving unseen somewhere far above him, where the roof shaded away into black shadow.

Under the thin cloak, Remus wrapped the sleeves of the jumper over his fingers, wishing he’d thought to put socks on instead of just his threadbare slippers. The hallways nearest the courtyard went unheated during the day except for a few coal braziers; now, he could see his breath fogging in the October air as he approached the entryway. Just before he passed through the arch, however, a new sound reached his ears. He paused.

Someone was crying.

He closed his eyes and took a moment to verify with himself that he really was doing this. Then, in a move that set him further apart from most boys his age than his lycanthropy ever could, Remus Lupin removed the cloak, stowed it carefully in the shadow of a nearby bench, and moved towards the sound of the crying.

He gripped his wand tightly in his right hand, straining to see the courtyard in the weak moonlight, unwilling to conjure a light yet. In the forefront of his mind now were two memories that were not far from the mind of any Hogwarts student that month: the first, the words _MUDBLOODS GET OUT_ , which had been found scrawled on nearly every chalkboard in the castle on the first day of classes; and the second, Carla Moretti, a muggleborn Hufflepuff third-year who had been found hexed to the point of unconsciousness underneath the same words two weeks later. No culprit had been found for either crime, although the entire student body had undergone mandatory wand checks, and the mood in the hallways was considerably more subdued than was usual in the weeks leading up to Halloween.

As Remus advanced towards the center of the courtyard, however, he made out a dark silhouette and a flash of familiar hair, and lowered his wand slightly.

“Lily?” he hissed. The girl shrieked, nearly falling off the bench she was curled on. He shushed her frantically. “Merlin, Lily, it’s just me. It’s Remus.”

When she turned to face him, he could see that her face was red; there were mascara marks on her cheeks. “Oh, great! _You’re_ here! _Fantastic!_ ” she whisper-shouted, glaring at him and angrily wiping at her face. “Where are Potter and Black?”

“What?”

“Oh, please, like they’re not skulking around here somewhere, just waiting to – to – to vanish someone’s hair or something,” she said viciously. “Don’t lie to me, Remus, I’m not in the mood for whatever stupid, irresponsible – actually, you know what, I’m _really_ not in the mood.” She stood up quickly and made to brush past him. He threw out an arm.

“Lily, it’s just me, I promise. What – what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

She stopped, taking a deep breath, and looked up at him. Her face, blotchy but scowling, crumpled suddenly. “I’m – sorry, sorry Remus, I’m just in a wretched mood, that was – that was really unfair of me…” and she started crying again.

“Oh no,” Remus distantly heard himself say, beginning to panic again now that he sensed no immediate emergency. “Don’t… don’t cry, Lily. Here, just – ” He maneuvered them awkwardly back to the bench and sat down, wrapping one arm around her shoulders and sparing a single moment to imagine what James’s face would look like if he came down to see why Remus was taking so long to retrieve the book. Lily was sobbing quietly into his sweater, though, and before he was fully conscious of it his hand was moving, almost of its own accord, to rub circles into her back. The courtyard was nearly silent around them; a low breeze stirred the leaves of the trees and blew some of Lily’s wild, brushfire hair across Remus’s face. An owl coasted by overhead. The air smelled crisp; mostly like autumn, but a little like whatever shampoo Lily used, too.

After a few minutes, her shoulders stopped heaving, and he heard her draw in a long, shaky breath. Feeling his arm loosen, she sat up, giving him a rather small smile and swiping at her cheeks with slightly less vehemence than before. “Well, your jumper’s ruined,” she said. “I am so, so sorry.”

“It’s Sirius’s, don’t worry.” Remus smiled back. “You look like a raccoon.”

She pointed at him sternly. “Don’t set me off again, I’m dehydrated enough as it is.” She drew in another long breath and let it out slowly, apparently giving up on salvaging her eye makeup. Remus thought this was reasonable, as it was dark out and they were likely the only two people about in the castle (unless you counted Filch, which the Marauders never did).

“Oh,” said Remus suddenly, straightening. He rummaged in his pocket until he produced the now slightly-battered chocolate frog. “I’m afraid I’ve already started it, but you’re welcome to the rest,” he said apologetically. “I promise it’s not jinxed.”

She took the packet gratefully, examining its contents. “Legs first, hmm?” she noted, biting off the head. “You’re a sadist, Remus Lupin.”

“A real monster,” he agreed, leaning back on the bench. They sat in a surprisingly comfortable silence for a few moments as Lily devoured the chocolate and Remus stared up at the moon. “Are you okay?” he asked finally.

“Yeah,” she answered shortly, and then, in a rush of words: “Really, I am sorry. It’s just been a horrible day – I missed breakfast and I forgot to get my Ancient Runes book back from Alice before class and Merriweather docked points, and Sev – Snape was so, so – ugh.” She scrubbed her hands over her face again. “This year’s just been rotten so far, you know? All the – the messages, and poor Carla, and I’m. Well. You know I’m muggleborn, so it’s all been a bit…” she paused. “And I’m on rounds tonight, obviously,” she gestured at the courtyard around them, “and I’m knackered, Remus, I just want to sleep but I’ve got twelve inches on the applications of manticore antivenom due Wednesday and I feel so nauseous and my back hurts and I’ve been snapping at people all day, Peter looked like I’d kicked him earlier…” she trailed off. “Anyway. I’m a little… volatile… right now. And I was trying to have a nice quiet cry alone before I got back to the dormitory, but then you showed up.” She didn’t sound nearly as put out about it as she had ten minutes earlier.

“I can go, if you want?” Remus asked anyway.

"No, it’s all right. I trust you, or I wouldn’t have eaten the frog.”

“It only took six years."

“Yeah, well, it’ll take Potter and Black another twenty.”

“James would never jinx your food,” Remus said seriously. “Enchant it to shout sonnets at you, maybe.”

Lily snorted. “He’s done that one already, third year.”

"I’d forgotten. Well, his writing’s improved a bit since then, at least.” She rolled her eyes.

“Why are you out here?” she asked, as if the question had just occurred to her.

“Looking for Peter’s divination book,” Remus said, sighing. “He thinks he left it out here and there’s an essay due tomorrow, apparently.”

“Yeah, Sarah Diggory’s been working on it all week. _Seeing Beyond the Veil_ , honestly.” Lily’s unknowing mimic of Sirius’s words earlier in the night earned a huffed laugh from Remus.

“Look,” he said tentatively after a while. “I can’t help with the manticore essay, I’m useless at Potions, but I’ve got something that might help your back.”

“God, I’ll take it, whatever it is,” Lily groaned, one hand moving to rub at the offending spot, as though Remus’s words had reminded her of its existence. “Though honestly – ” she broke off, coloring slightly. “It’s, you know. Girl stuff. So I don’t know how much help…” Remus felt his own face heat at that, but struggled valiantly to ignore it. He shrugged, praying the movement looked nonchalant.

“It’s just a heating charm,” he said carefully. “But it’s safe for skin and muscle tissue and should last for a few hours. Healers use it sometimes. D’you want me to try?” She nodded her head, looking slightly apprehensive, and he drew his wand. “I’ve cast it before,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone, before maneuvering her shoulders so he had room to place the tip of his wand against the center of her back. He murmured the incantation and watched with some satisfaction as Lily’s body visibly relaxed, the muscles unknotting for the first time all day.

“That’s dead useful,” the other said, sounding impressed. “Where’d you learn it?” _St. Mungo’s_ , he thought, _the day after a full moon when_ _I dislocated both of my shoulders trying to eat a man on the other side of a door._

“Quidditch book,” he said, wincing a little when it came out too quickly. “It’s good for, you know, sore muscles, things like that. Sirius is always complaining about his bat arm…” Lily had twisted around and was looking at him strangely, something unreadable in her face. He looked back at her, trying to school his own features to look less like they belonged to an utter liar.

“You’re a good friend,” she said after a moment. “Really, Remus. You’re… good at this.” He shrugged, looking down at where his hands twisted in the sleeves of his jumper. “I’m grateful,” she continued. “Now, let’s never speak of this again.” Remus grinned at that, relieved. It was hard to be awkward around Lily.

“Agreed,” he said, offering his hand. They shook. Lily’s grip was firm.

She waited while he summoned Peter’s book, watching as he caught it handily when it emerged from the underbrush like a fish hooked from a stream. They split ways in the corridor. Remus waited until Lily had passed through the hallway to the Prefects’ office before doubling back to retrieve the cloak.

 *

When he returned to the sixth-year boys’ dormitory, Peter had dozed off, and Remus gently shook him awake and handed him the book. The other boy thanked him, looking at it with ill-concealed loathing before departing to the common room to begin his essay. James and Sirius were also asleep, James’s deep breathing muffled by the curtains of his four-poster and Sirius – Sirius occupied Remus’s bed still, now curled up slightly towards the foot, on top of the blankets. Remus’s pillow was wedged firmly under his head.

Remus sighed, scrubbing a hand over his short hair. Waking Peter was one thing; waking Sirius was another, especially when he was tucked into himself as he was now, the lines of his sides and shoulders softened by the moonlight. The thin, pale skin at the insides of his arms and the hollow of his neck appeared luminous. Something bruised and small jerked deep within him, a now-familiar feeling that lurked somewhere beneath his breastbone, just next to the perpetual tugging of the claw the moon had sunk into his chest. Remus shut his eyes, opened them, stole the pillow from Sirius’s bed, and clambered into his own, carefully arranging his own limbs around the sleeping form at its foot.

The drowsy warmth of the dormitory was already settling into his bones, and he twitched the blankets back to cover as much of Sirius as they’d reach before drawing the sheet up around his own shoulders. He had time for a single thought, which was to warn James not to do anything particularly irritating to Lily for the next few days. Then, turning his face further into Sirius’s pillow, he felt his own breathing slow and synchronize with the two other sleepers. His eyelids lowered like shades, and he dropped quietly off into the muffled darkness.

* 

That was not, as Remus had presumed, the end of it. A week later, just a scant hour before the Halloween feast, Helena McMoray approached him outside the Defense against the Dark Arts classroom. This in itself was remarkable for a number of reasons, the first of which was that none of them had ever heard Helena, a shy Ravenclaw girl in their year, actually talk outside of class. The second was that the entire school had, as per annual tradition, been giving the Marauders a wide berth that day, in deference to (and fear of) whatever festive disturbance had been planned for the feast that night.

James had the kind of mad glint in his eye that usually only emerged on the Quidditch pitch, Peter had been caught laughing to himself no fewer than three times by lunch, and Sirius, Remus heard a seventh-year Slytherin prefect mutter, was “smiling too much.” Remus supposed that his own appearance was hardly reassuring; the full moon was in three days, and his body was aching, quiet and low like a song just on the edge of his hearing. Between that and the strain of maintaining plausible deniability for whatever happened at the feast (an exercise in futility, he knew), his usual mild demeanor was beginning to fray.

“Can I – can I talk to you for a moment, Remus?” Helena asked quietly.

Remus blinked, surprised that she knew his name. James and Sirius were usually the ones who got recognized straight off. “Er, yeah. Sure.”

“Alone?” she asked, eyeing the other three nervously. She looked very pale, Remus noticed, and her fingers were white where they gripped her schoolbag. He nodded, even though Sirius’s grey eyes widened in alarm.

“ _Moony_ ,” he hissed. “There isn’t time! We need you to get the – the _things_!”

“The what?” Remus asked, and wanted to hit himself as soon as he asked. “No, don’t tell me. I can’t know.”

“ _The kneazles_ ,” Sirius whispered furiously.

Remus pretended not to hear him. James grabbed Sirius by the arm and towed him away, shooting Remus an encouraging glance as he did so. “Peter can get the you-know-whats, Pads,” he said. “Remus, you go ahead with Helen…”

“It’s Helena,” Remus corrected reflexively, while Sirius looked betrayed. Remus studiously avoided eye contact and tried to turn his ears off.

“Peter can’t get them, he’s already seeing Kettleburn about the _goat_ – ” Sirius’s protestations faded as James dragged him into the mass of students heading down the corridor. Remus looked back at Helena, grimacing slightly.

“Sorry,” he said, “as usual. What’s up?”

Her gaze, which had been tracking James and Sirius’s progress down the corridor with something like terror, refocused on him. “What are the kneazles for?”

“What kneazles?” he replied blankly. She stared hard at him for a moment before shaking her head.

“Never mind. Can we – ” she gestured to the now-empty Defense classroom behind her. Remus nodded and followed her inside, leaning against one of the wooden tables. He’d always liked this room; something about its high ceiling and worn wood floors, he supposed. “Lily Evans told me what you did for her – with the, erm, the charm – the other night?” It took Remus a moment to recall, but when he did, his eyes widened. “This is awkward,” she said, “but – could you – ”

“Yeah,” he said quickly, “Yeah, no problem.”

“Oh, thank Merlin,” she sighed. “I don’t mean to be a bother, I just – you don’t happen to know a spell for, like, removing an entire uterus – ” her hand clapped over her mouth as soon as the words left it, and Remus laughed, startled.

“I rather think you might need to see a professional for that,” he said wryly, gesturing for her to turn around. She drew her long blonde hair over one shoulder, and he tapped her back and murmured the incantation. “Does it – do you feel better?” Helena turned back to him. Her face had lost the worst of its pinched look, and she smiled at him gratefully.

“Yes, much, thanks,” she said with feeling, rolling her shoulders a little. “Madam Pomfrey’s got a potion, you know. It works alright, but she makes you stay there for at least an hour, for some reason, and I didn’t want to miss the feast… she can be a bit…”

“Overbearing,” Remus finished for her, smiling a little himself. “She means well.”

“Right, of course,” Helena said, looking embarrassed suddenly. “Anyway, thanks.”

“No problem,” Remus repeated. “Oh, here.” He dug half a bar of Honeydukes’ best dark cocoa out of his bag and held it out. “This might help as well.”

“Honestly, I shouldn’t,” she said, snapping off a large piece anyway and handing the rest back to him. “I’m already planning on eating _at least_ my body weight in food at dinner. I’ll be ill. Well, _more_ ill,” she corrected, sliding her bag back onto her shoulder. Remus held the door open and she passed in front of him, raising a hand in farewell as she walked down the hallway towards the staircase that would take her to Ravenclaw common room.

“Helena.” His voice echoed a little in the now-empty corridor. She looked back over her shoulder, expectant. “Maybe steer clear of the trifle tonight,” he finished meaningfully. The Ravenclaw grinned, waving again in thanks before continuing down the hallway.

Remus watched her go, idly wondering if he should have warned her about the pasties as well. No, he decided after a moment, allowing a small smile. Today was Halloween, and he – well, he was, in the end, a Marauder.

 *

“Helena McMoray’s quite fit,” Sirius said unexpectedly two days later. They were in detention. Actually, only Sirius, Peter and James were in detention; Remus was there in solidarity. The bit with the goat had, after all, been his idea, even if none of the professors knew it. Filch had set them to scrubbing the floor of the entrance hall with toothbrushes. This was a more menial sentence than most Hogwarts students would have received, but the caretaker had learned over the last six years that there were very few punishments that the Marauders could not effectively turn into weapons of mass distraction. He’d left them after collecting their wands, not expecting Remus to emerge from under the cloak as soon as he’d gone. The werewolf, who had passed his own wand to James some time ago, had been staring idly at a weirdly-shaped stain on one of the flagstones and started when Sirius spoke.

“What?” 

“Helena McMoray,” Sirius repeated, concentrating on his toothbrush and not looking over at Remus or at James and Peter where they worked at the far end of the hall. “She’s, y’know, good-looking. Don’t you think?”

“Sure,” Remus said, suddenly irritable for no real reason. The full moon was tomorrow; a headache had been pulsating painfully behind his right eye all day, and, in all truthfulness, he had given his wand to James not out of sympathy but because the thought of casting any spell at all filled him with a surging wave of exhaustion that threatened to drag him under.

“Shy, though. Doesn’t talk much…”

“I don’t know,” Remus said acidly. “Quiet can be good. She seemed very nice when she asked to borrow my Defense notes earlier.” The lie came easily; he’d already told it once, the night before, more for Helena’s sake than his own. People had a – had a _right_ , he thought savagely, to have bad days without needing to explain themselves, to just act how they felt, for once, and not cover it up with forced smiles and – without being made to feel... feel guilty, or unreasonable, about it. Without feeling that their insides were being dragged out and displayed on the outside.

“Oh. So you’re…” Sirius was scrubbing very intently, and Remus was, abruptly, quite sick of the conversation. 

“I’m not interested in her, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said shortly. “So just… feel free to go for it. Ask her out, or – or whatever you do. I don’t care.” He took a deep breath. It didn’t help. “Sorry, but I’m exhausted,” he said, standing quickly and ignoring the spots that danced before his eyes. “You lot can keep the wand. See you back in the dormitory.” He swept the cloak back around his shoulders, raising the hood so he wouldn’t have to look at anyone as he left.

 *

He’d been uncharitable towards Sirius, Remus admitted to himself. Although fifth-year Sirius had boasted with consistency, if not always accuracy, about his success with girls, sixth-year Sirius was, thus far at least, much less zealous in his pursuits of the fairer sex (James Potter’s mother notwithstanding). Even when he had been “completely bird-mad,” as James had put it in a remarkable demonstration of his own hypocrisy where Lily Evans was concerned, Sirius had never been unkind.  The dark-haired boy was, without a doubt, one of the most popular students at Hogwarts, and he hadn’t gotten there by being cruel, except perhaps in the case of certain Slytherins.

It was true: Sirius cared remarkably little for the feelings of people who weren’t in his chosen circle. He was terrible at small talk – not out of any real ineptitude but because he simply didn’t see the point – and worse at remembering names. What he excelled at was reading people. It was, Remus reflected, an exceedingly Slytherin trait. Sirius Black was amazingly, almost supernaturally gifted at finding your deepest, most painful bruise, and driving a knife straight through it. Lately, this power was exercised almost exclusively on his cousin Bellatrix, his brother Regulus, and Severus Snape, although Sirius had been much less discriminating in his targets in their earlier years at school.

Remus could always pinpoint the moment Sirius changed from the joking, madcap jester of their group to something much darker. He always knew; the slope of Sirius’s shoulders would lower, like a switch had been flipped, and he would suddenly become _other_ – bored and patronizing and sharp, a kind of deity who only looked down at the people beneath him in order to kick them coolly back into place with the toe of his combat boot. The angles and planes of his body changed until the sprawl of his limbs became dangerous rather than boyish and his usual quick smile turned slow and cruel, without changing at all. Remus always knew; he watched it approach like a summer storm, all heavy air and unfurling clouds and birds exploding out of the trees.

What he could never do, when Sirius got like that, was stop him. That was James’s job. 

Sometimes, late at night, he imagined what it would be like to have that smile, with all its casual, surgical contempt, turned on him. Even Remus, well-practiced at rehearsing and preparing for the inevitable moment when his friends abandoned him, couldn’t imagine it in the clean light of day. At night, though, with the velvet hangings drawn around his bed and Sirius himself twisted up in his sheets only a few feet away, Remus forced himself to picture it – walking down the halls, alone, Sirius’s gaze sliding right over him, cool and impersonal. Like a stranger. Less than a stranger, even, for strangers were at least mysterious. Something worthless, then, something too threadbare to even notice.

The opposite of all this was also true, however. Sirius, perhaps paradoxically, couldn’t stand bullies, and hated seeing the people he liked upset. Remus remembered talking to Lily about it, near the end of fourth year; Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup, and the common room had been bursting with music, laughter, and Firewhiskey smuggled in by the Prewett brothers. Remus had flopped, happily boneless and flushed with a sense of victory that didn’t truly belong to him, onto a squashy couch next to the redhead. Her face was glowing as well, owing to the fact that Sirius had seized her around the waist and waltzed her, poorly but with great energy, around the common room twice before a well-placed foot from Peter had sent him stumbling into a group of third-years and Lily had been allowed to retreat, breathless and laughing, to the couches. She tapped her cup against his in a casual toast.

“Up Gryffindor,” she said, grinning, before taking a large sip and wincing at the burn. Remus did the same, manfully choking down the cough that threatened to escape. “It’s our last year for this, probably.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Well, I reckon we’ll be prefects next year,” she said. “Bit harder to, you know…” She gestured at their cups, but then paused, correctly read the surprise on his face. She continued more earnestly. “Remus, of course you’ll be picked. You’ve got some of the highest marks of our entire year, you’re responsible, mature, and… and… everyone likes you!” she finished triumphantly. “You’re the obvious pick.” Remus’s flush could no longer be blamed on the Firewhiskey alone. Neither of them bothered arguing about the likelihood of Lily’s appointment to the position; it was common knowledge that McGonagall had submitted her for consideration sometime around their second year.

“I… go home a lot, though,” he said. “Because of my mum. And…” he looked towards the fireplace, where Sirius and James were doing something complicated (and possibly illegal) involving someone’s cat and a group of first-years. Lily rolled her eyes.

“You’re not them,” she pointed out. “Dumbledore knows that. Besides, they’re not so bad.” There was a beat of silence. “Well. Black and Pettigrew aren’t so bad. Potter is… the worst. A complete tosser, really.” Remus laughed, taking another long sip of the Firewhiskey before letting his head loll back against the sofa behind him. It was much easier going down this time. He was extremely comfortable, and also extremely warm. He loosened his tie, undoing the top two buttons of his shirt.

“I thought you hated Sirius,” he said, watching the wizard in question grin broadly at one of the first years. It had poured during the match and Sirius’s hair was still damp, flopping over his forehead as he demonstrated one of his more heroic bludger hits, narrowly avoiding striking the cat.

“I thought I hated Sirius too,” said Lily thoughtfully. “But then – I had the strangest conversation with Tabitha Murdoch the other day. Apparently, he’s… he’s not actually such a bad bloke.”

Remus leveled a look at her. “I could have told you that.” 

“Yes, well, no offense, but you’re a bit biased.” Remus frowned, but she didn’t offer any explanation, instead peering into her cup, shrugging, and knocking the rest of its contents back in one swallow. He raised his eyebrows, impressed, and she grinned wickedly. “Not bad, this stuff. Catch up, Lupin.” He took one more glance towards Sirius and James and was surprised to find that Sirius was already looking at him, expression unreadable. Remus stared back. Then James turned and slung an arm around Sirius’s shoulders and the moment was broken. Remus knocked back his own cup, to Lily’s loud approval, and then Peter was there, and then Gideon Prewett with more drinks, and then Mary MacDonald started everyone on a round of enthusiastic pub songs, and then someone finally stepped on the cat, and then...

Night in the common room spun on around them, rosy and red and roaring.

 *

(What had happened between Tabitha Murdoch and Sirius Black, twelve days before the 1975 Quidditch Cup Final, was this:

 

“You need to stop crying,” Sirius demanded. “It’s mental. It’s got to end.” Tabitha stared up at him with wet eyes. The Hufflepuff fifth-year was sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, inside an unused broom cupboard on the third floor. She was, understandably, perplexed; she and Sirius had never actually spoken, at least not until ten seconds ago, when he had flung open the door to the broom cupboard and begun shouting. “Honestly, Murdoch,” he said, sounding aggrieved. “I know your git of a boyfriend snogged what’s-her-name. Everyone knows. No need to bawl about it every three hours.” Tabitha’s mouth opened soundlessly and then closed again. Sirius heaved a sigh, pushing a hand through his hair. “Merlin. Okay. Here’s the thing, Tabitha. Your freckles? Are adorable. Everyone thinks so. And whatever you’ve done to your – ” he gestured at his head, and Tabitha’s hand moved unconsciously to her own, recently-cut curls. “Yeah, that. It looks great. Also, you were well out of Michael Slough’s league from the moment you started dating, and someone should have told you, because then I wouldn’t have to keep hearing your – your _disembodied weeping_ – all hours of the day and night. You’re well shut of him. So just stop with the – ” he gestured helplessly again, this time managing to encompass the entire broom cupboard and Tabitha’s mussed robes and damp cheeks.  “All right?” Without waiting for an answer, he took a step backwards and closed the door. A beat passed before it opened again. “Also,” Sirius said, sticking his head back inside, “if you’re looking for a decent rebound, I had to listen to Fabian Prewett talk about the way you chew your quill for at _least_ an hour at practice last week. So.” Nodding decisively, he shut the door again.

 “God,” marveled Lily, when Tabitha repeated the experience to her a few hours later. “Sirius Black. I never would’ve expected it. And he didn’t try to snog you or anything. You’re _sure_ he wasn’t drunk?” Tabitha shook her head. “Well, he’s right about one thing,” the Gryffindor girl concluded, looking thoughtful. “Your hair looks _extremely_ good.”)

 * 

Remus was asleep before the other boys returned from detention, which suited him fine. He woke early the next morning, before the sun had fully risen, and groaned into his pillow.

“All right, Moony?” James asked blearily, apparently awake early himself. Sirius and Peter slept on.

“ _Hnnng_ ,” Remus replied.

“Hospital wing?” James asked, sounding more awake. Remus mumbled incomprehensibly in response. His head felt as though it was about to fall off his shoulders, and he could feel every individual joint in his hands, like the bones didn’t quite fit inside their muscles anymore. Something turned over unpleasantly in his stomach. This moon was going to be a bad one.

He twisted, gingerly, so he wasn’t speaking directly into his bed. “I’ve got to make it to Ancient Runes, at least.” Few things sounded less appealing, but it was the only class he didn’t share with one of the other Marauders, and therefore the only one for which he couldn’t borrow their notes. There was a rustling, the sound of bare feet on stone, and then James’s head appeared, thrust through the gap in Remus’s bedcurtains. His dark face looked strangely naked without the glasses, and his bedhead was, frankly, alarming. Remus wanted to say something to that effect, but was afraid to open his mouth in case he threw up. He felt like he had too many teeth.  

James squinted down at him before laying one hand on Remus’s forehead, as if he could ascertain the moon’s influence through the back of his hand. “Yeah, absolutely not,” he decided. “I’ll ask Evans to take notes for you. Can you walk?”

“Get Sirius to ask,” Remus said, when he felt he had a reasonable amount of control over his stomach. “Lily likes me well enough, but she might hex you on sight.” This admission was a clear enough agreement; he didn’t dignify James’s question with a response. He’d have to be stone dead to allow James Potter to carry him anywhere. Before his brain could talk him out of doing it, he sat up and swung his feet onto the floor. “You’re hovering, Florence.”

“Who’s Florence?” James asked, but he moved away while Remus slowly dressed and, once that feat was accomplished, allowed the werewolf to lean on him heavily as they made their way to the Hospital Wing.

 *

Twenty-four hours later, in the Hospital Wing again, Remus leaned over and was violently ill into the basin beside his bed. It was, thankfully, charmed to immediately vanish its contents, and Remus rinsed and spat before leaning back weakly. “I cannot believe you let me eat a mouse.”

Sirius, sitting with his long legs propped up casually on the foot of Remus’ bed, grinned. The hospital wing around them was silent, mid-morning light streaming in through the tall windows. Remus could hear Madam Pomfrey in her office, potion vials clinking quietly as she sorted through her inventory. She must have opened one, because he caught the smell of something minty and medicinal.

He didn’t look at the clock above the door, because he didn’t want to know which class Sirius was skipping in order to be here with him.  

“Don’t blame me for your weak constitution, Moony. That’s what comes of all your reading, and worrying, and – and tea-drinking. Your Moony habits. At least it wasn’t Wormtail.” Remus glared back at him half-heartedly, too tired for any kind of physical retaliation and unwilling to argue the point. His voice had the hoarse quality he hated, which it always held on the morning after a full moon: like someone had reached a hand down his throat and scraped their nails along its inside.

He couldn’t remember much from the night before, which was normal. There were vague flashes of memory, soft and blurred, with the same quality and movement that flecks of dust left in photographs when they floated past a camera lens, more impression than object. The sound of hooves in the hallway beyond the locked door, an antler scraping along a wall; Peter’s small, rodent-quick heartbeat; the velvet of James’s nose as it knocked against the wolf’s snout. There, too, Sirius’s warm, canine breath and his fur, like a smear of soot, pressed along Remus’ own human side as the moon began to recede and his skin returned. The wet, sandpaper-y feel of a flat tongue, scraping gently over the bruises and scratches on his hands, like a benediction, like an apology.

The pain he remembered perfectly, of course. And the mouse: the sickening crunch, the plump  weight of it, its softness against his too-many teeth. His stomach rolled again. 

“I’m not interested in Helena McMoray,” Sirius said. He wasn’t smiling anymore, instead staring down at where his muddy combat boots rested on the white sheets. His hands, white-knuckled on the armrests of the chair, looked as though they wanted a cigarette. Remus’s own hands moved abortively, clenching in the blankets. Sirius looked up. The unreadable look was back in his eyes. Remus thought about the way Sirius had appeared, back in June, with the reds of the Gryffindor common room and the fireplace on his skin and the flush high on his cheeks. About his eyes glinting with mischief and something darker, about the way his own name sounded in Sirius’s mouth, a rounding of vowels and then exhalation: a sigh. _Moony._

“Okay,” Remus said softly. “All right.”

 * 

But that wasn’t the end of it, either. Two weeks after Halloween, Rebecca Singh, a Gryffindor in their year, cornered him behind Greenhouse Six. And a few days after that, seventh-year Slytherin Alexa Greengrass walked in on him in the prefects’ bathroom.

“Sorry,” she said, not sounding it. “Didn’t realize anyone was in here.” This seemed unlikely, as the door was spelled to lock itself behind anyone that entered, but Remus didn’t say so, since Alexa was busy asking him whether he knew of any good mood-stabilizing charms. “It’s for Maggie Turpin,” she said, as though that explained her presence in the prefects’ bathroom at five o’clock on a Saturday night. Her voice was slightly muffled through the thick cloud of steam and her eyes were trained determinedly on the wall somewhere to the left of Remus’s ear.

“Erm,” said Remus intelligently. “I’m not sure I – have you – ” Not for the first time, he cursed whatever animal instinct made him resort to _politeness_ , of all things, in uncomfortable situations.

“Don’t make this weird, Lupin,” she said. “I talked to Helena. Well, as much as anyone talks to Helena.”

“I’m in the _bath_ ,” he tried desperately, sinking as far into the green (and thankfully opaque) water as his respiratory system would allow. He wished, with sudden vehemence, that he were a Grindylow.

“I’d noticed,” she said, with an aristocratic eyebrow lift that rivaled Sirius’s. They were distant cousins, Remus remembered inanely. The thought bothered him, for no reason he could readily identify. “Well? Maggie keeps throwing things and she nearly hexed her boyfriend’s – ”

“ – _Merlin_ – ” Remus said faintly.

“ – straight off. And now she won’t stop crying,” Alexa finished. Remus’s cringe had sent the water in the tub sloshing, releasing a burst of scent that smelled strongly of fresh apples. “I’m sympathetic but I really need to study and she’s not exactly quiet.”

“I really don’t understand why everyone thinks I – ”

“Lupin.” She sounded impatient, which was ludicrous, as it wasn’t as though Remus had interrupted _her_ bath. “The frizziness of my hair is directly proportional to the amount of time I spend in this room. Work with me.”

“It’s not _my_ fault – ” Remus started incredulously, finally thrown from his refuge of politeness. She held up a hand and he stared at it, annoyed. This time, both eyebrows rose elegantly.

Remus gave in. “I don’t know any spells, but – ” he started. Alexa groaned dramatically. “ – _But_ , if I were looking for one, I’d check… er… _Magical Moods: From the Jealousy Jinx to Pepper-Up Potion_. I think that’s the title, anyway. It’s in the library.”

“Thanks,” Alexa said, sounding surprised. “That’s actually helpful.”

“Excellent. Wonderful. Please leave,” he said firmly.

“I thought you always gave chocolate,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him.

Remus sighed. He was going to have to ask Sirius to nick some more the next time he snuck into Hogsmeade. “Check the outside pocket of my bag.” Her shape blurred as she moved closer to the door and the table that held his belongings. There was a sound of rummaging, and then of crinkling, and then of chewing.

“Hold on, I thought this was all for Maggie Turpin,” he said, outraged.

“It is.” Alexa’s shadowy form waved his chocolate at him. “Finder’s fee. Bye, Lupin.”

“You’re not even a prefect!” he hollered after her, but the door closed on his words and they echoed back at him from the stone walls. He stared at his hands where they clutched the edge of the bath: the too-long fingers, the knuckles, the knob of bone at the place where they joined his skinny, boyish wrists. Blowing out a long breath, he let go, squeezed his eyes shut, and slid under the apple-scented water.

This had to end.

He’d tell the others, he decided. They’d know what to do. They’d understand.

* 

“I don’t understand,” said Peter.

“Really?” Sirius asked. Remus, grateful that he’d elected to field that one, pretended to be engrossed in his copy of _Elementary_ _Magical Cartography: Mapmaking for the Witless Wizard_. He had the feeling that the book was really interesting, but his brain refused to cooperate, and he stared sightlessly down at the words. The dormitory was warm and close, the torches on the wall providing a steady light. “Who else do we know that gets really ill once a month and starts snapping at everything in sight?” Sirius asked.

James sucked in a breath. “This actually makes a disturbing amount of sense.”

“How do you just… talk to them, though?” Remus blinked, looking up from the book.

“Pete,” Sirius said carefully. “You know girls are, like, people, right?” Peter shrugged, apologetic.

“I like helping,” said Remus, surprising himself. “I… it’s not… it’s hard. Every month. Knowing it’s happening, and not – not being in control of it. Being tired, and angry, and sore, and – and sick. It feels like…” He frowned, looking for the right word. “Like a betrayal. Like your body is rejecting you.” The dormitory was silent. Remus stared down at the pages and licked his lips nervously. “Before I came here – they lock us up, you know, at the Ministry. One of the lower levels. My mum would drop me off, the day before, and I’d spend the whole day in the cell, just… waiting. And after, they’d – let us out in the morning, once the moon set.”

He left unspoken the fact that, even now, he typically couldn’t walk out of the Shack on his own power. The mornings-after tended to be just as blurred as the nights that preceded them; Remus was left with the vague impression, only substantive because of the regularity of its recurrence, of James prodding at the worst of his cuts, Sirius looking on dourly from the other side of the room, Peter’s body expanding to its human dimensions as soon as Remus’ own mass shrank and he sagged to the floor. Sometimes, he thought, he felt a dry hand on his forehead, gently pushing his hair away from his face; once, he was certain a thin blanket had been pulled over his shoulders. Mostly, though, he woke up in the Hospital Wing, too tired (or embarrassed, or both) to ask Madam Pomfrey how she moved his unconscious body through the castle in the early hours of the morning. “You just – have no control,” he repeated quietly. “You know it’s happening and you can’t stop it.”

“Moony,” James said after a moment, equally quiet. “There’s a difference between – what happens to you – and, y’know, crying a lot and shouting and eating weird food and everything.”

“I know,” Remus said, forcing lightness into his tone. He looked up. Peter was staring at him, James looking on with concern, but Sirius’ grey eyes were fixed firmly on the ground. Remus knew, without understanding how he knew, that Sirius was imagining five-year-old Remus Lupin curled up on the floor in an impersonal room somewhere in the bowels of the Ministry, miserable and sick and waiting for the moon to rise so he could bite and scratch and tear at his own small body. He straightened up, suddenly regretting saying anything at all. It wasn’t worth the look Sirius now wore, the kind of purposefully-blank expression he only used when he was Having Emotions and didn’t want anyone else to know. “Anyway,” he said firmly, eager to move on. “The question is what to do about the _girls_.”

 *

“What to do about the girls” turned out to involve one extremely uncomfortable conversation with Madam Pomfrey, during which Remus explained the circumstances and the spells he’d been using and the matron rebuked him for practicing magic on other students without supervision before patting him awkwardly on the hand and awarding Gryffindor ten points. This was followed by a week or so of redirecting Hogwarts’ female population to the Hospital Wing, after which things gradually returned to normal, or something approaching it. Remus hadn’t been accosted in the corridors once, and no one had cried on him in days, but one thing was still off-kilter: Sirius was avoiding him.

He wasn’t being obvious about it, which, Remus thought, was actually making it worse, because it _looked_ , on the outside, as though nothing was wrong. Sirius laughed and joked and pranked and muttered dark comments, but suddenly they were universally addressed to the group, not to Remus alone; and, having spent an inordinate amount of time in the last months making unsettling eye contact with the other boy and then quietly panicking about it, he was discomforted to realize that he’d not actually caught Sirius’s gaze in over a week. They were, Remus thought despairingly, playing _eyeball tag_. He’d briefly considered the most likely possibility: that Sirius had been happy to play along with Remus’s “monthly problem” when it had been a game, a new way to rebel and a sure piece of ammunition to use against his family. Maybe, uncomfortable, he was reconsidering the entire thing now.

On reflection, though, that didn’t seem particularly likely. He thought of Sirius’s firm voice in second year, when he and James and Peter had ambushed Remus and told him in no uncertain terms that they knew what he was and would not be telling anyone else. He thought of Sirius’s hands in third year, when he slammed a thick book onto a table in the library and jabbed at the title excitedly: _The Animagus Within_. He thought of Sirius’s shining face in fifth year, his crow of delight: _I’m a massive dog!_ How his eyes crinkled at the corners and, this year, the way he bounded into the Hospital Wing and spilled a bag of Honeydukes's best all over Remus’s lap, mouth laughing and eyes sparkling. No, it didn’t seem likely that his words alone could have undone all of that. Remus clung to this fact harder with every day that passed by with no change in Sirius' behavior.

When he began to doubt that conviction, though, he knew he had to take action. Had it been anyone else, he probably would have let it go and hoped that time would heal whatever had broken; but, as this was Sirius, who often made extremely stupid decisions without thinking them through, Remus decided that the direct approach might be best.

*

 

“That’s a disgusting habit,” Remus said. He plucked the cigarette from between Sirius’ lips, careful as usual to make sure that their fingers didn’t touch, and tucked it between his own. He took a long inhale, tipping his head back and staring up at the grey sky as he exhaled. Unperturbed, Sirius dug the carton out from a pocket and shook a new one out onto his palm. Remus looked away as he lit it, cupping his broad hands around the end to shield it from the cold wind blowing in off the lake. Sirius, chaotic as he was, was also a creature of habit, a fact for which Remus was grateful. It had made finding the other boy easy, a matter of identifying likely locations and then eliminating them. This spot -  behind a rocky outcropping, between the Whomping Willow and the Black Lake – offered privacy and a slight respite from the biting late-November winds that whipped across the mountains and over the water. It had been number two on Remus’ list, the first being the Astronomy Tower, to which Sirius liked to retreat when he was in the mood, as he put it, to stare up himself from a great distance.

“Moon this week,” Sirius said after a while. Remus nodded. 

“Tuesday.” They fell silent again.

“I didn’t know – ” Sirius started.

“You’ve been avoiding – ” Remus began simultaneously. “No, you go.”

“I didn’t know it was like that,” Sirius said. His cigarette glowed where it balanced between his index and middle fingers. “You don’t – you never talked about it. Before.”

“Well, no. It’s not exactly uplifting material.” Remus attempted a smile.

“I’m sorry I’ve been so – I mean, I – I don’t know how to help,” Sirius said, all in a rush. “I feel so fucking stupid, I never realized – and you shouldn’t have to… _it isn’t your fault_ ,” he finished, sounding angry and frustrated and all at once Remus understood.

“You _do_ help,” he said, staring at Sirius. “Honestly. I’ve never had anyone, y’know, actually care before. About the day before, or – the morning after.” He flushed a little, but soldiered on. He had to make Sirius understand. “You’re always there, Sirius. You – you and James plan your _pranks_ around the moon, just so you’re not stuck in detention, don’t think I haven’t noticed. And you don’t get angry when I’m awful, and I _know_ I’m awful, Sirius. _I know_. You’re always – distracting me, and _bringing me things_ – ” He broke off, thinking again about the blanket, and the cool hand brushing through his sweaty hair, and the feeling of Padfoot’s solid body against his bruised ribs. “You help,” he finished, with vehemence. “You do.” Sirius stared at him, mouth slightly open and the cigarette still burning away between his fingers. Remus felt a little silly, and the silence stretched between them. “So please stop avoiding me,” he added in a smaller voice.

Sirius nodded. His unreadable expression was back, but Remus thought, with a little more time, he might be able to work it out. They sat there quietly, and when Remus finished his cigarette Sirius wordlessly held out the rest of his. They passed it back and forth until that one was done too. When his extremities began to go numb with cold, Remus levered himself up and held out a hand. Sirius took it, Remus pulled him to his feet, and they began the walk back up to the castle. The backs of their hands brushed occasionally, knuckles catching on knuckles. Remus didn’t move away, and neither did Sirius.

Behind them, the surface of the lake was calm and still; the waxing moon rose slowly over the bare trees, and the first flakes of snow began to fall.


End file.
